One more day of test tile batching and dipping

Here's the second section of Jim's wonderful, under the tree decoration. It's such fun to wake up and turn on the Christmas tree and other Christmas lights on the staircase - such a happy pre dawn vision.

Before breakfast I headed to the studio to clean up a couple of the cone 10 slipped plates and dipped a few more raw tiles and got the bisque kiln loaded with the tiles and the last of the cone 10 pots. They're warming up a bit to dry things out and I'll start the bisque this afternoon.

The cone 6 test tile count is up to 137 tiles with more to be done today. Tomorrow I'll be wadding them all. If it were my kiln, I'd just lay them on a good layer of alumina hydrate; but in the wood/soda kiln I think it best to wad them.

With some very early studio time, I need to get my tonight dinner prepped early. It's potato pancakes tonight. The potatoes and onion are peeled so I just have to grate the potatoes and get everything mixed and ready to go so I can work till 5 o'clock.

Planning the day

We had a lot of rain yesterday, so I'm hoping the morning weeding will go easily. I'm hoping to harvest more of the garlic,dig up some more potatoes and plant some more bush beans; but if the soil is too saturated after yesterday's rain, the potato digging will have to wait till tomorrow.

After the hour of garden chores, the rest of the day will be for studio work. I have to clean up the drips from the pots I slipped a few days ago and start decorating them. I'll quit around 4 and head for the kitchen. After a heavy steak meal last night, I decided to freeze the other two steaks for another time. Jim thought it would be a waste to use those lovely strip steaks in my Mexican stir fry; and I wasn't looking forward to two heavy meat dinners in a row. So tonight it's salad and potato pancakes.

Yesterday, I harvested a bunch of pickling cucumbers and hope Jim can find me some more dill heads at the store later, so I can start a small crock of pickles. I only planted a couple of dill seeds for the leaf part; but forgot I would need more when it came time to make some pickles.


Yesterday I planned to just vegg out after our house guests left, but wound up doing some garden work, then on to a good bit of kitchen time baking two loaves of zucchini bread, got some of the green beans processed and in the freezer, and cooked a steak dinner with some computer work before and after. The day ended with watching two back to back Anthony Bourdain shows. The one on Naples had some interesting facts on Neapolitan pizza making. Evidently the government has created a strict code on what you can call Neapolitan pizza, even to the .3 millimeter thickness of the crust, the temperature at which is must be cooked - well over 400 C)and the type and where the tomatoes can be grown (in the local volcanic soil, etc). Truly amazing!

Time to start our boiled eggs and zucchini bread breakfast. Another busy day awaits.

Studio is tour ready

I'm pretty well ready for the TRAC tour which begins at noon Friday - 100 artists studios in Mitchell and Yancy Counties in Western North Carolina will be open through the weekend. The hours will be noon to 4pm Friday and 1- to 6pm Saturday and Sunday.

Today with my helper Betty, we got studio floors, buckets and tables cleaned. I got the wrapping and hospitality tables ready, and the studio display area is all set up. Tomorrow I'll do just spend time doing some re-organizing of small things and Jim will, as always, take care of the separate gallery, which just needs a quick dusting and vacuuming.

We got the tiniest bit of rain mid afternoon - not enough to do much; but it looks like the neighboring towns of Spruce Pine and Burnsville got quite a bit more.

Well, my potatoes are grated and drained, time to mix up the rest of the ingredients for tonight's potato pancakes. We're planning a relaxed evening with a Netflix PD James mystery. Life is good!